At last, the afternoon has passed and it has gotten dark. Michele opens an aglianico, a real beauty, but my mom declines. She is accustomed to a little cocktail, she says, that she really prefers to anything else anymore. I watch as she pours some blackberry schnapps, white jug wine, and a tablespoon of brandy into a jelly jar over ice cubes. I am stunned. My mother is drinking some sort of shitty wine cooler. Torpedo Juice! My snobbish, superior mother. The woman who taught me everything I know—delectable and odious alike—has been shed and here before me is a new woman. A woman that anyone meeting for the first time would find perfectly lovely.

— from "Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef" by Gabrielle Hamilton